The discussions continued and Melvor Idle was soon signed to Jagex Partners OSRS Gold, the RuneScape firm's publishing arm. Jagex provided Malcolm development advice and helped to complete a brand overhaul in addition to assisting with community management and localisation, transforming the game created by one person into something accessible in 13 countries (so that far).

The launch was earlier this month and even the Early Access version proved this formula was popular with RPG gamers, having been downloaded over 600,000 times through Steam and the major marketplaces for apps on mobile. This far exceeded Malcolm's initial expectations when he launched his game. Naturally, he hoped his game would be successful but he didn't have an 'endgame that he was thinking of.

"Luckily the passion that fuelled those early months remains with me over the last couple of years of development. And being working with Jagex to directly tackle this is an absolute dream come true," he says. "I didn't think I'd eventually get the assistance of the studio that inspired me in the beginning.

Making the jump from hobby to fan-driven project was obviously terrifying however, looking back at the direction I've taken, and the support I've received for establishing Games by Malcs as an young and promising studio, it's definitely worked out for the best."

Despite the apparent connection to Melvor Idle and RuneScape, and the involvement direct of Jagex the publisher chose to keep the game an original IP, rather than create an official RuneScape spin-off. In part, this was acknowledgment that Malcolm had achieved in a place that Jagex itself had failed.

"We actually did look at the idea of creating an uninvolved RuneScape game some years ago with RuneScape: Idle Adventures," Pfeiffer elaborates buy runescape 3 gold. "In Alpha, we stopped development in order to concentrate attention on main RuneScape games.